24th Street Clubhouse, New York City, N.Y.

November 15, 1952

A meeting was held at the 24th Street Club House in memory of Dr. Bob. A recording of Dr. Bob’s last talk was played and a portrait of Dr. Bob was unveiled. Bill W. then addressed the meeting.

Dr. Bob’s recorded voice has come down to us across the air since he died in 1950. Some may say that his actual voice is still forever, but you and I know that is not so and that his spirit will be with us so long as this well loved society of ours endures. Now, I happen to be one who believes that people never die, that on beyond death there is another life and it could be that Dr. Bob is looking down upon us now, seeing us, hearing what we say and feel and think and have done in this meeting. I know his heart will be glad.

Dr Bob was a chap who was modestly and singularly against taking any personal acclaim or honor but surely now that he is no longer with us he can’t mind, I don’t believe and for him I wish to thank everyone here who has made this occasion possible and the unveiling possible, with all the work and love that that has entailed. Again, I wish to thank each and everyone.

In A.A. we always deal in personalities, really, this thing is transmitted from one to another and it isn’t so much what we read about it that counts, it’s what we uniquely know about of ourselves and those just around us who have us and who we would help. Therefore, I take it that you folks would like it better than anything else if I just spun a few yarns about Dr. Bob and that very early part of A.A., which we so often call the period of flying blind.

Of course you’ll remember my little story about how a friend comes to me with the idea of getting more honest, more tolerant, making amends, helping others without demand for reward, praying as best I knew how and that was my friend Ebby.

As you heard Dr. Bob say, he had heard those things too from the same source, namely the Oxford Groups which have since as such, passed of f the scene and have left us with a rich heritage of both what and what not to do. Anyway, a friend comes to me and I go to other alcoholics and try to make them my friends and some did become my friends but as you heard Dr. Bob say, not a darn one got sober.

Then came that little man that we who live in this area saw so much, him with kind of blue eyes and the white hair,’ Doc Silkworth. You’ll remember that Doc said to me, “Look Bill, you’re preaching at these people too much. You’ve got the cart before the horse. This ‘white flash’ experience of yours scares these drunks to death. Why don’t you put the fear of God into them first? You’re always talking about James and the Varieties of Religious Experience and how you have to deflate people before they can know God, how they must have humility. So, why don’t you use the tools that we’ve really got here, why don’t you use the tool of the medical hopelessness of alcoholism for practically all those involved? Why don’t you talk to the drunk about that allergy they’ve got and that obsession that makes them keep on drinking and guarantees that they will die? Maybe when you punch it into them hard it will deflate them enough so that they will find what you found.”

So, another indispensable ingredient was added to what is now this successful synthesis and that was just about the time I set out for Akron on a business trip. It had been suggested by the family that it was about time that I went back to work. I went out there on this venture, which as Dr. Bob said, “fortunately fell through.” You heard him tell about the story in the hotel after I had taken a good beating and I was tempted to drink and needed to look up another alcoholic, not this time to save him but to save myself, for I had found that working with others had a vast bearing on my own sobriety.

Then, how we were brought together by a girl who was the last person on a long list of people I ‘d been referred to. The only one who had time enough and who cared enough and that was a girl in Akron, herself no alcoholic, her name was Henrietta Seiberling. She invited me out there and she became interested at once. She called Smiths and we learned Smithy had just come home with a potted plant for dear old Annie and he put it on the dining room table but as Annie said that just then he was on the floor and they couldn’t come over at that minute.

You’ll remember the next day how he put in an appearance. Haggard, worn, not wishing to stay and how then we talked for hours. Now I have often heard Dr. Bob say and I thought he said it on the recording that “it was not so much my spirituality that affected him,” he was a student of those things and I certainly know that he was never affected by any superior morality on my part. So, what did affect him? Well, it was this ammunition that dear old Doc Silkworth had given me, the allergy plus the obsession. The God of science declaring that the malady for most of us is hopeless so far as our personal power is concerned. As Dr. Bob put it in his story in the book “here came the first man into my life who seemed to know what this thing alcoholism was all about.”

Well, if it wasn’t the dose of spirituality I poured into Dr. Bob, it was that dose of indispensable medicine to this movement, the dose of hopelessness so far as one doing this alone is concerned. The bottle of medicine that Dr. Silkworth had given me that I poured down the old grizzly bear’s throat. That’s what I used to call him.

Well, he gagged on it a little, got drunk once more and that was the end. Then he and I set out looking for drunks, we had to look some up. There is a little remembered part of the story. The story usually goes that we immediately called up the local city hospital and asked the nurse for a case but that isn’t quite true. There was a preacher who lived down the street and he was beset at the time by a drunk and his name was Eddie and we talked to Eddie and it turned out that Eddie was not only a drunk but something which in that high faluting language we now call a manic depressive, not very manic either, mostly depressed. Eddie was married with two or three kids, worked down at Goodrich Company and his depression caused him to drink and the only thing that would stop the depression was apparently baking soda. When he got a sour stomach, he got depressed so he was not only drinking alcohol but we estimated that in the past few years he had taken a ton of baking soda. Well, we tried for a while, of course, we thought we had to be good Samaritan’s so we got up some dough to try to keep the family going, we got Eddie back on the job but Eddie kept right on with alcohol and baking soda both. Finally, Dr. Bob and Annie took Eddie along with me into their house, a pattern which my dear Lois followed out to the nth degree later and we tried to treat Eddie and my mind goes back so vividly to that evening when Eddie really blew his top. I don’t know whether it was the manic side or on the depressive side but boy did he blow it and Annie and I were sitting out at the kitchen table and Eddie seized the butcher knife and was about to do us in when Annie said very quietly “well Eddie, I don’t think your going to do this.” And he didn’t. Thereafter, Eddie was in a State asylum for a period I should think of going on a dozen or more years but believe it or not he showed up at the funeral of Dr. Bob in the fall of 1950 as sober as a judge and he had been that way for three years.

So even that obscure little talk about Eddie made the grade. So then Dr. Bob and I talked to the man on the bed, Bill Dotson, who some of you have heard, A.A. number three. Here was another man who said he couldn’t get well, his case was too tough, much tougher than ours besides he knew all about religion. Well, here it was, one drunk talking with another, in fact, two drunks talking to one. The very next day the man on the bed got out of his bed and he picked it up and walked and he has stayed up ever since. A.A. number three, the man on the bed.

So the spark that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous was struck. I came back to New York after having taken away a great deal from Akron. I never can forget those mornings and those nights at the Smiths. I can never forget Annie reading to us and the two or three drunks who were hanging on, out of the bible. I couldn’t possibly say how many times we read Corinthians on love, how many times we read the entire book of James with loving emphasis on that line “Faith without works is dead.” It did make a very deep impression on me; so from the very beginning there was reciprocity, everybody was teacher and everybody was pupil and nobody need look up or down to the other because as Jack Alexander put it years later “we are all brothers and sisters under the skin.”

A group started in New York, but let’s turn back to Akron. Smithy, unlike me and the man on the bed was bothered very badly by a temptation to drink. Smithy was one of these continuous drinkers. He wasn’t what you would call one of these pantywaist periodic’s. He guzzled all the time and apparently by the time he got to be sixty odd, which was when he got A.A. He was so soaked in rum that he just had a terrible physical urge to drink. Long after he told me that he had that urge for something like six or seven years and that it was constant and that his basic release from it was in doing what we now call the twelfth step. So Smithy, greatly out of love and partly by being driven began to frantically work on those cases, first in City Hospital in Akron and then as they got tired of drunks in the place, finally over at St. Thomas where there is now a plaque which bears an inscription dedicated to all those who labored there in our pioneering time and describing St. Thomas in Akron as the first religious institution ever to open it’s doors to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ah, how much of drama, how much of struggle, how much of misery, how much of joy lies in the era before the plaque was put there. No one can say. There was a sister in the hospital, a veritable saint if you ever saw one. Our beloved Sister Ignatia. Dr. Bob mentioned her. He told how she would deny beds to people with broken legs in order to stick drunks in them. She loved drunks. She was a sort of female Silkworth, if you know what I mean. So finally a ward was provided and you remember that Dr. Bob was an M.D. and a mighty good one. Now you know that quite within the A.A. Tradition Dr. Bob might have charged all those drunks who went through that place for his medical services. He treated 5,000 drunks medically and never charged a dime, even in that long period when he was very poor. For unlike most of us to whom it is a credit to belong to Alcoholics Anonymous, it was no credit to a surgeon at that time. “It was lovely that the old boy got sober” his patients said, “but how the hell do I know he’ll be sober when he cuts me up at nine o’clock in the morning.” And so that frantic effort went on out there and it went on here and we got back and forth a little bit between Akron and New York. You haven’t any conception these days of how much failure we had. How you had to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get a handful to take the bait. Yes, the discouragements were very great but some did stay sober and some very tough ones at that.

The next great memory I have is that of a day I shared with him in his living room in the fall of 1937. I, you remember had sobered up in late ’34 and Bob in June 1935. Well, we began to count noses, we asked ourselves “How many were dry and for how long,” Not how many failures, how many successes were there in Akron, New York and the trickle to Cleveland and in the other little trickles to Philadelphia and Washington. How much time elapsed on how many cases? We added up the score and I guess we had maybe forty folks sober and with real time elapsed. For the first time Dr. Bob and I knew that God had made a great gift to us children of the night and that the long procession coming down through the ages need no longer all go over into the left hand path and plunge over the cliff. We knew that something great had come into the world.

Then it was a question of how we would spread this and that was answered by the publication of the book and the opening of the office here. It was spread by our great friends who rallied about us. There were friends in medicine, friends in religion, friends in the press and just plain but great friends. They all came to our aid and spread the good news.

Meanwhile drunks from all over Ohio, all over the Middle West flocked into the Akron hospital where Dr. Smith and Sister Ignatia ministered to them. And I have no doubt that two out of three of those drunks are sober, well and happy today. So that achievement certainly entitles Dr. Bob to be named as the prince of all twelve steppers.

That was the end of the flying blind period; next we needed to discover whether we could hold together as groups. We had learned that we might survive as individuals but could this movement hold together and grow. On a thousand anvils and after a million heartbreaks the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous was also forged out of our experience and what had been a tiny chip, launched in the flying blind time on the sea of alcoholism now became a mighty armada spreading over the world, touching foreign beachheads. Of all that, this meeting here in this historic place in commemoration of Dr. Bob is a great and moving symbol. I know that he looks down upon us. I know that he smiles and we know that he is glad.

The kindly faced man lying in the white hospital bed raised his hand to the light, studied it calmly and then remarked to the nurse standing by his bed:

“I think this is it.”

Thus Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith recently passed from the world. So, finally, the story of “Dr. Bob, beloved by 120,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous whom he had helped to find the way back to respectability and happiness, can be told. At the death of his wife, Anne, a year before, Dr. Smith’s identity had been revealed, but the story of the co-founder of A.A. remained a secret.

Dr. Bob was a boy in New England, 72 years ago, and his mother sent him to bed at 5 o’clock every evening. Just as regularly did he secretly arise, dress, and slip out the back way to continue the game with his boyhood pals. He learned early to revolt against authority.

When he went away to college he became a steady drinker.

He had always wanted to be a doctor but his strong willed mother had always opposed it, and it was three years after he graduated from Dartmouth before he got up the courage to go to medical school. He drank so continuously he just did manage to get his degree. Once he went off on such a protracted binge that his fraternity brothers had to send for his father to straighten him out.

All this time Bob was corresponding with Anne, his high school sweetheart. That was as far as their courtship went. With the exception of two hard working years as an intern, he was seldom sober. Still, Anne, waiting for a miracle, married no one else.

The miracle happened, apparently, after a year-long period of heavy drinking left him terrified and on the wagon. In 1915 when he was 35 years old and some 17 years after he had first met her, he married Anne and brought her to Akron with him as his bride. They were happy for several years – until the Eighteenth Amendment was passed.

The Grapevine, the official magazine of Alcoholics Anonymous, explains in the weird logic of the alcoholic what happened then. Dr. Bob figured that since he’d soon be unable to get any more alcohol, he might as well drink up what there was. Despite prohibition, he never found it difficult to get more. From then on, he had a regular pattern. He began drinking every afternoon at four. Every morning he’d quite his tortured nerves with sedatives and, trembling, go to work to make enough money to buy alcohol for four o’clock. That went on for 15 years.

In the meantime, a New York broker who had drunk himself out of prominence discovered that when he was trying to talk drunks into going on the wagon, he had less craving for liquor. This broker, known to A.A.’s as Bill W., went to Akron on a business deal in 1935. The deal fell through and Bill found himself once more a failure, with only 2$ in his pocket. He knew right away that he had his choice: find a drunk to talk to, or get drunk himself.

Fortunately, he found a drunk, Dr. Bob.

Bill moved in with Dr. Bob and straightened him out. When he and Dr. Bob wanted a drink, they’d go out and find a drunk to talk to. They sobered up a number of habitual drinkers in Akron that way and then their fame began reaching out to other cities. Slowly, gradually, the idea spread.

Almost before Dr. Bob and Bill, the co-founders, were aware of it,

Alcoholics Anonymous was a going concern.

The book, Alcoholics Anonymous, was written. It is now in its 13th printing. People began to write in from all over the world. Some were alcoholics themselves, some were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives or friends of alcoholics. They all got an answer.

Dr. Bob, who had devoted half his life to drinking, still found himself a slave to alcohol – only now it was on the other fellow’s breath. He personally visited some 5,000 in Akron hospitals, encouraging them. As his period of sobriety increased, more and more patients came to him, and it looked as though one part of his ambition, to own a convertible, might not be impossible after all.

Finally he made it. Last year he got a new yellow convertible. The Grapevine pictures him, at the age of 71, speeding through the streets of Akron in it. “The long slim lines made even more rakish with the top down.

No hat, his face to the sun, into the driveway he sped. Pebbles, flying, tires screeching, he’d swoosh to a stop.

And, just then, before he put 150 miles on the gleaming yellow convertible, Dr. Bob’s malignant disease took a turn for the worse and he had to give up driving. He died a few months later.

Bill W. explained why there will be no imposing monument to this man who saved so many people from alcoholism. When it was once suggested, last year, Dr. Bob said: “Anne and I plan to be buried just like other folks.”

And so only a simple plaque in the alcoholic ward of St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, where Dr. Bob did so much of his work, commemorates his work as co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

“Simplicity, devotion, steadfastness, and loyalty; these were the hallmarks of Dr. Bob’s character which he has well implanted in so many of us.” – Bill Wilson.

ROBERT HOLBROOK SMITH, M.D.

1879-1950

Dr. Bob was born August 8, 1879, in St. Johnsbury, Vt., the only son of Judge and Mrs. W.P. Smith, who were prominent in civic and social activities of that city. Though often rebellious against the strict authority of his parents, “Rob,” as his schoolmates called him, was willing to work hard to attain whatever he sincerely wanted; by the time he was nine, he knew he wanted to be a physician.

In his teens, he spent parts of his summers working on a Vermont farm and in an Adirondack summer hotel. Despite his dislike of school, he was a good student and graduated from St. Johnsbury Academy in 1898.

He spent four years at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1902. It was during these school years that drinking became a major activity, though in those days he was never involved in serious trouble because of it.

Three years later, having worked at various jobs in Boston and Montreal, he entered the University of Michigan as a premed student. Here, the pace of his drinking accelerated, and in his sophomore year he left school temporarily, feeling he couldn’t complete his course. But he returned, took his exams, and passed them. In 1910, after further training at Rush Memorial College in Chicago, he received his medical degree and secured an internship in City Hospital, Akron, Ohio. Completing his internship in 1912, he opened an office in the Second National Bank Building in Akron, remaining there until his retirement in 1948.

In 1915, he married Anne Ripley, whom he had met while attending St. Johnsbury Academy. As time went on, his alcoholism progressed steadily, yet he was able to function, and few of his colleagues knew how serious his illness was.

Besides being an active member of the City Hospital staff in Akron, he often visited St. Thomas Hospital, also in Akron, where, in 1928, he met Sister Ignatia for the first time.

Later, in 1934, he became associated with St. Thomas and in 1943, became a member of the active staff.

In the early thirties, Dr. Bob, in desperate search for an answer to his problem, began to attend meetings of the Oxford Group, feeling he could benefit from its philosophy and other spiritual teachings. Though he continued to drink, he maintained his activity in the group, due in large part to Anne’s deep interest.

In May 1935, a meeting with another alcoholic, Bill Wilson, led to his own permanent sobriety and to the formation of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is estimated that Dr. Bob, with the help of Sister Ignatia, guided some 5,000 fellow alcoholics to recovery during his 15 years of loving ministry to them.

What manner of man was Dr. Bob? According to his son: “He had tremendous drive, great physical stamina. He was reserved and formal on first acquaintance, but as you came to know him, he was just the opposite: friendly, generous, full of fun – he loved a good joke. Regarding A.A., he tried to make every decision in the best interests of the group, to the exclusion of any personal advantage. He never ceased to be surprised that so many people sought him out, but felt he had only been God’s agent and so was not due any personal credit.”

Bob and Anne lived simply; if he had any pride of possession, it was for cars. He played bridge expertly, always playing to win! An avid reader, he read for at least an hour each night of his adult life, “drunk or sober.” He was a fight fan, succumbing finally to television so he could watch the fights.

He held three concepts in particularly high regard. One was simplicity – in his own lifestyle and in practicing the A.A. way of life. Second, he believed in tolerance of other people’s ideas, in speaking out “with kindness and consideration for others,” and in “guarding that erring member, the tongue.” Third, he believed that one’s job in A.A. was to “get sober and stay sober” and “never to be so complacent that we’re not willing to extend that help to our less fortunate brothers.”

Dr. Bob firmly believed that “love and service” are the cornerstones of Alcoholics Anonymous. He died of cancer at City Hospital, Akron, November 16,1950.

This is one of the earliest letters in the Dr. Bob and Anne Smith Archives pertaining to the writing of the Big Book.

To: Dr. R. H. SmithOrville, OhioAkron, Ohio3-11-39, Saturday p.m.

Dear Doctor:

I am terribly sorry that it is has been necessary to delay the enclosed manuscript concerning some of the facts in Z—–‘s life, (Note: Harry Z’s story in the first edition of the Big Book is titled, “A Close Shave”) but it just couldn’t be helped. He and I were not able to get together the day I thought we would and then too I had a certain amount of detail work that just had to be done. I sat down to my typewriter just after dinner and hurriedly jotted down some of the facts that Z—– had given to me. I am not certain as to just what all you wanted in this sketch so I’m very much in the dark as to how and what to write. I am sorry I was not in town the day you were here. However, rather than to hold up the works until I can find out what you want, I am sending you this rambling collection of hurried thoughts, hoping that you will see fit to cut and slash it, also doctor it in any way you care to. You saw Z—– in this nervous state and it would be a fine thing if you could or would add a paragraph. Feel free to doctor the rest of it so as to make it serve the purpose for which you want it. You know the necessary phraseology that I do not.

We are counting on having at least twelve men present on Wednesday night (Note: Oxford Group Meeting at T Henry and Clarace Williams House). We will see you then.

Most Sincerely,

D.E. Nickersen

P.S. You will do me a favor Wed nite if you drop the title and refer to me as just plain “Don” Nickersen. If you would call me Reverend, my men will not know who you are referring to. Thanks! I understood this chapter on Z—– was to be anonymous(sp). That explains the fictitious names.

The Dr. Bob and Anne Smith Archives was transferred from the attic of Dr. Bob’s daughter, Sue Smith Windows, in Akron, Ohio to a permanent repository at the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies in Providence, Rhode Island. It joined several other collections already housed at Brown including the Kirk Collection (15,000 items pertaining to the temperance movement and early A.A.), the Clarence Snyder Collection (books, pamphlets, letters and ephemera retained by “The Home Brewmeister” from 1938 to1983), and the Ernie Kurtz Collection (research material used to write Not God). The archive contains numerous newspaper articles from the 1940’s. This one, titled, “Co-Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous Is Speaker” provides an early portrayal of the events that led to the founding of A.A. and a description of A.A Group activity in the Cleveland, OH area in 1942. The article states that there are 7,000 members of A.A. and 2,000 of them reside in the Cleveland area. Cleveland A.A.’s were certainly doing something right!!!

Cleveland Plain Dealer–1942 (undated)

Co-Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous Is Speaker

An Akron physician, co-founder of an organization which in the seven years of its existence has restored thousands of hopeless alcoholics to normal living, spoke in Berea last Friday night.

The organization is Alcoholics Anonymous and the occasion was a “round-table” discussion sponsored by the Berea Group of the fellowship. Since anonymity is observed names cannot be published. The co-founder was one of three men participating in the special program. Another was a leader of the movement in Cuyahoga County and the third, a man who was one of the first five members of the fellowship.

100 Attend

Open only to members, the program on Friday night was attended by more than 100, including visitors from various of the 22 groups in Cuyahoga County.

The basis for the fellowship was discovered by a New York stock broker more than seven years ago. Confined to a sanitarium as a hopeless drunk, he underwent a spiritual experience which revealed a way to sobriety. Months later, and still sober, he was in Akron on a business deal of great personal importance. The deal fell through and filled with disappointment he realized that unless he did something about it, he would return to the hell of his drinking days.

Movement Born

Consulting a directory of Akron churches he picked one at random and phoning the pastor asked him if any member of his congregation was afflicted with a drinking problem. Through this phone call the broker and the physician met and Alcoholics Anonymous was born.

For several years development was slow, with small groups in Akron and New York. Later an Alcoholics Foundation was founded in New York and a book “Alcoholics Anonymous” was published. Since then Liberty, Saturday Evening Post and various newspapers have carried articles about the fellowship. It is estimated that there are now more then 7,000 members in the United States. Most rapid growth has been in the Cleveland area where membership is now near the 2,000 mark. The Berea Group has been in existence for a year and a half.

Not Reformers

Not at all concerned with liquor as a social evil or a moral problem, AA members are not reformers in any sense of the word. In fact, they respect the man who is what they term a “social” drinker. But realizing that alcoholism is an affliction as deadly as cancer these ex-drunks have banded together to help another in molding a new way of life. Effects achieved have astounded medical authorities.

The fellowship has no doctrines of sectarianism, and does not require members to take pledges of any sort. It costs nothing to join and there are no dues. In the groups will be found members of all religious faiths and those who have religious affiliations. Lawyers, doctors, salesmen, carpenters, mechanics meet on the same plane.

Requirements

Requirements are that a man or woman admits a drinking problem and honestly desires to do something about it. Spiritually, new members must believe only in a power greater than themselves, and their personal conception of this power does not enter into the picture. Members make no effort to “sell” the plan, but will go to any lengths to help an alcoholic once he seeks their aid.

The fellowship, however, does endeavor to make itself accessible to those who desire to learn more of the movement. For this purpose a post office box is maintained in Cleveland and communications can be addressed to Alcoholics Anonymous, P.O. Box 1688, Station C, Cleveland, Ohio.

Bill W. had met a kindred spirit in Dr. Bob. Both men were born in Vermont, both were intelligent and both were alcoholics. They somehow knew that fateful evening in Henrietta Seiberling’s Gatehouse home both of them were going to be okay.

After a few weeks of working with each other and attempting to deliver the message of recovery to other alcoholics, Bill and Dr. Bob did not appear to be discouraged. Despite their not being able to bring another rummy into the fold – they were staying sober. Quite a feat for Dr. Bob who had been attending Oxford Group meetings for a few years, even prior to getting together with Bill.

Dr. Bob was feeling so secure that he decided to attend a convention of the American Medical Association. He had not missed a convention in 20 years and did not plan on missing this one. Bob’s wife, Anne was set against him attending the convention. She remembered previous ones where he had gotten drunk.

Dr. Bob assured her that he would not drink. He said that alcoholics, even those who had stopped drinking, would have to begin to learn how to live in the real world. She finally agreed and off he went.

Dr. Bob kept his promise to Anne. That is, until he boarded the train to Atlantic City. Once on the train Dr. Bob began to drink in earnest. He drank all the way to Atlantic City, purchased more bottles prior to checking in to the hotel. That was on a Sunday evening.

Dr. Bob stayed sober on Monday until after dinner. He then resumed his drinking. Upon awakening Tuesday morning his drinking continued until noon. He then realized that he was about to disgrace himself by showing up at the convention drunk.

24-Hour Blackout

He decided to check out of the hotel and return home. He purchased more alcohol on the way to the train depot. He waited for the train for a long time and continued to drink. That was all he remembered until waking up in the home of his office nurse and her husband back in Ohio.

Dr. Bob’s blackout lasted over 24 hours. There was a five-day period from when Dr. Bob left for the convention to when the nurse called Anne and Bill. They took Dr. Bob home and put him to bed. The detoxification process began once again. That process usually lasted three days according to Bill. They tapered Dr. Bob off of alcohol and fed him a diet of sauerkraut, tomato juice and Karo Syrup.

Bill had remembered that in three days, Dr. Bob was scheduled to perform surgery. On the day of the surgery, Dr. Bob had recovered sufficiently to go to work. In order to insure the steadiness of Dr. Bob’s hands during the operation Bill gave him a bottle of beer. That was to be Dr. Bob’s last drink and the “official” Founding date of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The operation was a success and Dr. Bob did not return home right after it. Both Bill and Anne were concerned to say the least. They later found out, after Dr. Bob had returned, that he was out making amends. Not drunk as they may have surmised, but happy and sober. That date according to the AA literature was June 10, 1935.

June 10, 1935 has been considered as AA’s Founding Date for many years. After all, it was the date Dr. Bob had his last drink – or was it? Recently discovered evidence appears to differ with the “official” literature.

The “Official” Date

The Archives of the American Medical Association reportedly show that their convention in Atlantic City, in the year 1935 did not start until June 10th. How could Dr. Bob have gone to the convention, by train – check into a hotel – attend the convention on Monday – check out on Tuesday – be in a blackout for 24 hours – go through a three -day detoxification – perform surgery on the day of his last drink – June 10, 1935?

Five days had passed since Dr. Bob left for the convention and returned to Akron. There was the three-day detoxification process and then there was the day of the surgery. Approximately nine days had passed from when he left and the date of his last drink.

If the records of the American Medical Association are in error as to the date of their convention it is possible that June 10, 1935 was the date of Dr. Bob’s last drink. If the records are in error, the 1935 convention would have been the only one in the history of the American Medical Association that was listed with the wrong date.

It now appears that the date of Dr. Bob’s last drink was probably on, or about, June 17, 1935. Maybe AA should keep the June 10th date as a symbolic Founding Date rather than claim it as the actual one? Maybe the date should be changed to reflect historical accuracy?

Either way, Dr. Bob never drank again until his death, November 16, 1950. Dr. Bob sponsored more than 5,000 AA members (which if you do the math equals more than one per day in the 15+ years that he was sober!) and left the legacy of his life as an example. Dr. Bob told those he sponsored that there were three things one had to do to keep sober: